2007 In Review, Pt. 3 - Film
2007 was a great movie year in general and for me personally. Tons of awesome material was released, and I far exceeded my record for theatrical viewings. I saw 37 different movies in a theater this year, of which 34 were new releases; in chronological order, they were: Dreamgirls, Pan's Labyrinth, Children Of Men, Zodiac, 300, Grindhouse, Hot Fuzz, Spider-Man 3, 28 Weeks Later, Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End, Knocked Up, Ocean's Thirteen, Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer, Live Free Or Die Hard, Transformers, Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, Sunshine, Rescue Dawn, The Bourne Ultimatum, Superbad, Hairspray, 3:10 To Yuma, Stardust, Eastern Promises, Michael Clayton, 30 Days Of Night, No Country For Old Men, Beowulf, Southland Tales, The Mist, The Golden Compass, I Am Legend, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street and Juno. I also saw three older films in a theater: Labyrinth, Aguirre The Wrath Of God and the Final Cut of Blade Runner.
Narrowing down my Top 10 was a challenge, but I didn’t have as much trouble ranking them as I anticipated. Also, please note that this list reflects my own personal biases, and I saw many well-made films that did not strike as much of a chord with me and thus did not make the cut. That said, I feel confident that this is a good representation of the best that cinema had to offer in 2007, so read and enjoy.
10. The Bourne Ultimatum (directed by Paul Greengrass, written by Tony Gilroy, Scott Z. Burns and George Nolfi from the novel by Robert Ludlum, starring Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, David Strathairn, Scott Glenn, Paddy Considine, Albert Finney and Joan Allen) - The Bourne trilogy cements its place as the gold standard in contemporary action cinema with its latest installment, which I would venture to say is the best of the three. Matt Damon's amnesiac clandestine operative is as emblematic of the 21st-century cultural zeitgeist as James Bond was of the '60s and John McClane or Rambo was in the '80s, with the added benefit of starring in more intelligent, better crafted films. The Bourne Ultimatum combines layered, thought-provoking themes of paranoia, identity and morality with striking, suspenseful chase sequences and fight scenes. Picking up right where the previous film left off, Greengrass keeps Ultimatum thundering along as relentlessly as its impassive, unstoppable protagonist, whose quest for answers to the mysteries of his past takes him across three continents to a finale that closes the series in an appropriate fashion while still leaving things open enough for a fourth film to be greenlit. Personally, I'd love them to just let these three stand as the impeccable sequence they are.
9. Grindhouse (written and directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, starring Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Josh Brolin, Marley Shelton, Michael Biehn, Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms and Zoe Bell) - Oh, Grindhouse. Why could you not find an audience? Why did people seem to have such a problem with a three-hour double feature paying homage to the Z-grade flicks that used to fester at drive-ins and seedy urban theaters, full of sex and gore? I walked out of Grindhouse unable to remember the last time I'd had as much fun at the movies. Rodriguez's zombie apocalypse Planet Terror and Tarantino's serial-vehicular homicide/femsploitation homage Death Proof are unabashed rip-offs of sleazy '70s and '80s grindhouse movies, except with hugely improved production values, acting, and writing, made distinct by the unique touch of their respective directors. It's not for everyone, but for someone of my sensibilities it was like mainlining heroin after three years sober. Extended versions of the two features are out on DVD, but you may want to wait for the inevitable "theatrical experience" DVD release to see them as they were meant to be seen.
8. Rescue Dawn (written and directed by Werner Herzog, starring Christian Bale, Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies) - Werner Herzog is maybe one of the three or four best directors alive, but he's also a crazy person, which is why you may not have heard of him. He's been making movies for decades, usually from his own scripts and with virtually no consideration for marketability or commercial appeal. Rescue Dawn is probably the most accessible, "mainstream" film of his career, but manages to bridge that gap while still maintaining its Herzogian sensibilities. Bale stars as Dieter Dengler, a German-born U.S. Air Force pilot who crash-lands in Laos on the eve of the Vietnam War, is taken prisoner and begins to plot an escape with fellow American captives Duane (Zahn) and Gene (Davies). Based on a true story and beautifully shot on location in Thailand, this is a harrowing journey into the psyche of a man who must strip himself down to nothing and build his mind anew in order to survive. Bale turns in an incredible performance, and there are shots and lines of dialogue that are still running through my head months after I saw it.
7. Michael Clayton (written and directed by Tony Gilroy, starring George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton) - Tony Gilroy had a pretty good year, what with writing The Bourne Ultimatum and writing and directing this little gem. Clooney stars as the title character, a "fixer" for a high-powered law firm, brought in when anything to do with the firm, its clients or its lawyers goes off the rails. The man who derails in this case is Arthur Edens (Wilkinson), lead counsel on a huge class-action lawsuit against the firm's biggest corporate client. Edens has a nervous breakdown in the middle of a crucial deposition, and Clayton has to right the ship, while also dealing with the slow dissolution of his personal life, a gambling problem and a failed business venture with his deadbeat brother that leaves him owing money to the mob. Clooney, Wilkinson and Swinton (as the in-house lawyer of the corporation) all outdo themselves in a whip-smart legal thriller that pretty much blew my mind. In most other years, this would have been my favorite film of the year, which shows you just how stiff the competition was.
6. Zodiac (directed by David Fincher, written by James Vanderbilt from the book by Robert Graysmith, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards and Brian Cox) - Zodiac represents a huge step forward for Fincher after the treading-water release of Panic Room. The film follows the real-life events surrounding the Zodiac killing in San Francisco during the late '60s and '70s. The focus here is not on the killings themselves, which remain unsolved, but the men who became obsessed with unraveling the killer's identity: political cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Gyllenhaal), crime reporter Paul Avery (Downey) and police detective Dave Toschi (Ruffalo). The evocation of the historical period is stunning, as are the allegories for the information age; the three central characters' growing compulsions to pore over minute details and the maneuverings they must go through to acquire evidence are fascinating to watch. The film reconcieves the police procedural in a way far closer to reality than most Hollywood fare, and its inconclusive ending only serves to heighten that effect.
5. Juno (directed by Jason Reitman, written by Diablo Cody, starring Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons) - And, smack in the middle of all these intense crime dramas and historical epics, we have...a comedy! About a teenage girl who gets pregnant and decides to give up the child for adoption, no less. Normally, you would not catch me anywhere near a movie like this, but there is nothing normal about Juno. It deftly avoids the cloying clichés of its genre and presents a carefully drawn, highly believable cast of characters instead of the caricatures that would populate one of its lesser cousins. Ellen Page is flawless as the titular mother-to-be, projecting just the right combination of intelligence and naiveté; she reacts to her problem as a level-headed near-adult and never transforms into the squealing parody that most movies would tells us a pregnant teen must, but also realizes her limits and recognizes that some things are beyond her. Jennifer Garner takes on a role far outside her comfort zone as the wife in the adoptive couple, and when the dynamic between her, her husband (Bateman) and Juno takes a turn in the third act, she acquits herself with grace. The first-time script from Diablo Cody is outstanding, and if this and Thank You For Smoking are any indication, Reitman has a career ahead of him that will leave his father's in the dust. (Ivan Reitman directed and produced some films you may have heard of, such as Ghostbusters.)
4. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (directed by Tim Burton, written by John Logan from the musical by Stephen Sondheim, starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jayne Wisener and Edward Sanders) - In the hands of most directors, a film adaptation of a three-hour stage musical about a homicidal barber in Victorian London and his cannibalistic, meat-pie making partner in crime would have been a disaster. Luckily, Tim Burton is not most directors. The darkest of his Gothic sensibilities were given free reign here, and the result is an unmitigated triumph. Trimming everything but the most central storyarc from the source material, the movie focuses squarely on Sweeney Todd (Depp), the barber whose 15-year exile from England has left him bitter and bent on revenge. Ably assisted by his former landlady, Mrs. Lovett (Carter), Todd sets out to murder the corrupt judge (Rickman) who deported him as a prelude to violating his wife and taking in his daughter, Johanna (Wisener). As time passes and plans falter, Todd becomes more and more bent on extending his revenge to the whole world, leading to his inevitable downfall. Told almost entirely through song, Sweeney Todd is a striking and unique vision of one man's madness, with Burton creating an incredible visual landscape and Depp delivering a hypnotic, unforgettable performance.
3. Eastern Promises (directed by David Cronenberg, written by Steve Knight, starring Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel and Armin Mueller-Stahl) - My favorite film of 2005 was A History Of Violence, and this re-teaming of Cronenberg and Mortensen is a worthy follow-up. Anna Khitrova (Watts) is a London midwife who delivers a baby from a teenage girl who dies in childbirth. The girl's diary is written in Russian; in an effort to track down the girl's family, Anna follows a business card she finds in the diary to a restaurant owned by Semyon (Mueller-Stahl), who offers to translate the writings. Anna quickly realizes she is in over her head as Semyon's ties to the Russian mob become clear. Gradually, the focus of the film shifts to Nikolai (Mortensen), Semyon's driver, who appears to be torn between his loyalties to Semyon and his son (Cassel) and a burgeoning attraction to Anna. Things are not exactly what they seem, and while I won't spoil the plot for you, how things happen is not quite as important as why, or why not, as the case may be. Cronenberg drags away the veneer of civility to expose the rot lurking just beneath the surface of our everyday lives, embodying our unspoken fears of existing in a society that none of us can fully understand, even while a part of it. Mortensen disappears into the role of Nikolai, and his cold, hard stare will follow you all the way out of the theater. Eastern Promises also boasts one of the most visceral, effective fight scenes ever put to film. It's not for the squeamish, but then again, that's sort of the point.
2. There Will Be Blood (written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson from the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Ciaran Hinds, Dillon Freasier and Kevin J. O'Connor) - While I did not actually see this film during 2007, I will count it as a 2007 release for the purposes of this list. Anderson is one of those directors that knocks it out of the park almost every single time, making a name for himself with Boogie Nights and cementing it with Magnolia. While I did not much care for Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood is his best work yet. Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) is a self-described "oil man" in California at the turn of the century, creating an empire for himself via charisma and the sweat of his brow. That empire, however, has a singular purpose: to divorce Plainview from any sort of meaningful human contact. A borderline sociopath, his loathing for the rest of humanity knows almost no limits, and his own emotional responses seem to disgust him. His conflict with Eli Sunday (Dano), a young preacher who leads a community sitting on top of a rich oil deposit, begins a slow burn within Daniel, a conflagration that rages within him for months and years, drawing in everyone around him, including his son H.W. (Freasier), and builds towards an ending that is bizarre, and shocking, but is also the only conclusion that makes any sense. I leave the details of the plot vague because it's better that way. Anderson restrains himself here, giving Daniel and his actions a slow, concentrated attention befitting the epic scope of the picture. The opening sequence, virtually without dialogue for almost fifteen minutes, is just gorgeous, and the visual poetry of the American West on display throughout serves as an appropriate backdrop for this very American story of ambition, greed and madness. I would be remiss if I did not mention Jonny Greenwood's score; the Radiohead guitarist's composition is decidedly non-traditional, but utterly appropriate, and carries the silent sections with aplomb while heightening the film's impact as a whole. Paul Dano (the silent brother in Little Miss Sunshine) gets an amazing role for a young actor and blows it out of the water, but the story here is all about Day-Lewis. Famous for his eccentricities and intense commitment to roles, he explodes into the character of Daniel Plainview with demonic abandon, baring some truly dark parts of himself, going to the kind of mental/emotional places you don't talk about in polite company. It's hard for something in a movie to frighten me, but Day-Lewis was truly terrifying, and utterly magnificent.
1. No Country For Old Men (written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen from the novel by Cormac McCarthy, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Kelly Macdonald and Woody Harrelson) - The Coen brothers are two of my very, very favorite directors, and I feel comfortable saying that No Country For Old Men is the best film they've ever made, which is quite a feat. It's better than Blood Simple. It's better than my beloved Big Lebowski. It's even better than Fargo, pretty much universally agreed to be one of the top ten American films of the 1990s. Based on what I'm told is an equally searing novel by Cormac McCarthy, the basic premise of No Country is deceptively standard. Llewelyn Moss (Brolin) is a welder and Vietnam vet in 1980 West Texas who discovers the scene of a drug deal gone wrong in the middle of the desert and absconds with the buy money, some two million dollars. He is pursued by Anton Chigurh (Bardem), a hitman hired to retrieve the cash. Both men are in turn being tracked by Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Jones), a local lawman who suspects he may be out of his depth. Thus begins a cat-and-mouse game that ranges across various nondescript motels and lonely roads, as the three men circle around one another and occasionally collide. The back-and-forth between Moss and Chigurh is perfectly measured by the Coens, with rising tension and brief resolution alternating until the audience is left breathless. Fate and circumstance, favorite themes of the Coens, are explored thoroughly here, as are the ideas of changing times and the nature of violence within our society. The ending may throw you a little, but if you reframe the film with Sheriff Bell as the main character, things will become more clear. The Coens' direction is taut and moody, marrying their neo-noir sensitivities to the desert landscapes with skill and vision. Javier Bardem turns in a performance as an intractable embodiment of evil just as horrifying in its insanity as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood. While I've somewhat exhausted my capacity for hyperbole, everything I said about Daniel Day-Lewis above applies to Bardem as well. Brolin and Jones are also astonishing, and I challenge you not to get chills during Jones' final speech.
Honorable Mentions go, in alphabetical order, to: 28 Weeks Later, 30 Days Of Night, 3:10 To Yuma, Beowulf, The Golden Compass, Hot Fuzz, I Am Legend, Knocked Up, The Mist, Stardust, Sunshine, and Superbad. I must also mention Transformers, which while utterly bereft of dramatic credibility, was a triumph in the field of giant-robot-ass-kickery.
I would like to extend a Special Mention to Blade Runner: The Final Cut, which I had the pleasure of seeing in the gorgeous Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline. Ridley Scott redefined cinematic science fiction with this film's original release in 1982, and this new definitive version only improves on his stunning vision of the future. This film, alongside Jaws and one or two others, is largely responsible for my ideas of and appreciation for film aesthetics and visual structure. I've seen it I don't know how many times, and never get tired of it. The new cut is already out on DVD, so put it in the Netflix queue and see what all the fuss is about.
As much as I'd rather not, I also must make Dishonorable Mentions of two films that were huge disappointments for me. Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 had about one-and-a-half plots too many, trying to cram in everything before the three-picture deal with Raimi, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst expired. Despite some great action sequences, the movie is a mess structurally and makes a weak conclusion to a series whose first two installments were so strong. Richard Kelly's Southland Tales, meanwhile, is one of the worst sophomore slumps of all time. Say what you will about Donnie Darko, but I'm a big fan. To see Kelly's follow-up descend into such raging, pretentious incoherence was just sad. Let's hope that The Box, coming sometime next year, will be the second film we all wanted to see from him.
So, that was 2007 in film according to Pat. 2008 is shaping up to be quite eventful on the summer-blockbuster and comics-adaptations front. The big news, of course, is Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight, and the return of Professor Henry Jones, Jr. in Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army and The X-Files 2 are also of particular interest to me. Other 2008 releases that may be worth checking out include: Cloverfield, Be Kind Rewind, Jumper, Synecdoche New York, Righteous Kill, Choke, The Lovely Bones, The Happening, Wall-E, Valkyrie, Pineapple Express, James Bond 22, The Changeling, Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Star Trek, The Box, Bruno: Delicious Journeys Through America For The Purpose Of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable In The Presence Of A Gay Foreigner In A Mesh T-Shirt, Burn After Reading and The Fighter.
Narrowing down my Top 10 was a challenge, but I didn’t have as much trouble ranking them as I anticipated. Also, please note that this list reflects my own personal biases, and I saw many well-made films that did not strike as much of a chord with me and thus did not make the cut. That said, I feel confident that this is a good representation of the best that cinema had to offer in 2007, so read and enjoy.
10. The Bourne Ultimatum (directed by Paul Greengrass, written by Tony Gilroy, Scott Z. Burns and George Nolfi from the novel by Robert Ludlum, starring Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, David Strathairn, Scott Glenn, Paddy Considine, Albert Finney and Joan Allen) - The Bourne trilogy cements its place as the gold standard in contemporary action cinema with its latest installment, which I would venture to say is the best of the three. Matt Damon's amnesiac clandestine operative is as emblematic of the 21st-century cultural zeitgeist as James Bond was of the '60s and John McClane or Rambo was in the '80s, with the added benefit of starring in more intelligent, better crafted films. The Bourne Ultimatum combines layered, thought-provoking themes of paranoia, identity and morality with striking, suspenseful chase sequences and fight scenes. Picking up right where the previous film left off, Greengrass keeps Ultimatum thundering along as relentlessly as its impassive, unstoppable protagonist, whose quest for answers to the mysteries of his past takes him across three continents to a finale that closes the series in an appropriate fashion while still leaving things open enough for a fourth film to be greenlit. Personally, I'd love them to just let these three stand as the impeccable sequence they are.
9. Grindhouse (written and directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, starring Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Josh Brolin, Marley Shelton, Michael Biehn, Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, Tracie Thoms and Zoe Bell) - Oh, Grindhouse. Why could you not find an audience? Why did people seem to have such a problem with a three-hour double feature paying homage to the Z-grade flicks that used to fester at drive-ins and seedy urban theaters, full of sex and gore? I walked out of Grindhouse unable to remember the last time I'd had as much fun at the movies. Rodriguez's zombie apocalypse Planet Terror and Tarantino's serial-vehicular homicide/femsploitation homage Death Proof are unabashed rip-offs of sleazy '70s and '80s grindhouse movies, except with hugely improved production values, acting, and writing, made distinct by the unique touch of their respective directors. It's not for everyone, but for someone of my sensibilities it was like mainlining heroin after three years sober. Extended versions of the two features are out on DVD, but you may want to wait for the inevitable "theatrical experience" DVD release to see them as they were meant to be seen.
8. Rescue Dawn (written and directed by Werner Herzog, starring Christian Bale, Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies) - Werner Herzog is maybe one of the three or four best directors alive, but he's also a crazy person, which is why you may not have heard of him. He's been making movies for decades, usually from his own scripts and with virtually no consideration for marketability or commercial appeal. Rescue Dawn is probably the most accessible, "mainstream" film of his career, but manages to bridge that gap while still maintaining its Herzogian sensibilities. Bale stars as Dieter Dengler, a German-born U.S. Air Force pilot who crash-lands in Laos on the eve of the Vietnam War, is taken prisoner and begins to plot an escape with fellow American captives Duane (Zahn) and Gene (Davies). Based on a true story and beautifully shot on location in Thailand, this is a harrowing journey into the psyche of a man who must strip himself down to nothing and build his mind anew in order to survive. Bale turns in an incredible performance, and there are shots and lines of dialogue that are still running through my head months after I saw it.
7. Michael Clayton (written and directed by Tony Gilroy, starring George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton) - Tony Gilroy had a pretty good year, what with writing The Bourne Ultimatum and writing and directing this little gem. Clooney stars as the title character, a "fixer" for a high-powered law firm, brought in when anything to do with the firm, its clients or its lawyers goes off the rails. The man who derails in this case is Arthur Edens (Wilkinson), lead counsel on a huge class-action lawsuit against the firm's biggest corporate client. Edens has a nervous breakdown in the middle of a crucial deposition, and Clayton has to right the ship, while also dealing with the slow dissolution of his personal life, a gambling problem and a failed business venture with his deadbeat brother that leaves him owing money to the mob. Clooney, Wilkinson and Swinton (as the in-house lawyer of the corporation) all outdo themselves in a whip-smart legal thriller that pretty much blew my mind. In most other years, this would have been my favorite film of the year, which shows you just how stiff the competition was.
6. Zodiac (directed by David Fincher, written by James Vanderbilt from the book by Robert Graysmith, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards and Brian Cox) - Zodiac represents a huge step forward for Fincher after the treading-water release of Panic Room. The film follows the real-life events surrounding the Zodiac killing in San Francisco during the late '60s and '70s. The focus here is not on the killings themselves, which remain unsolved, but the men who became obsessed with unraveling the killer's identity: political cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Gyllenhaal), crime reporter Paul Avery (Downey) and police detective Dave Toschi (Ruffalo). The evocation of the historical period is stunning, as are the allegories for the information age; the three central characters' growing compulsions to pore over minute details and the maneuverings they must go through to acquire evidence are fascinating to watch. The film reconcieves the police procedural in a way far closer to reality than most Hollywood fare, and its inconclusive ending only serves to heighten that effect.
5. Juno (directed by Jason Reitman, written by Diablo Cody, starring Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons) - And, smack in the middle of all these intense crime dramas and historical epics, we have...a comedy! About a teenage girl who gets pregnant and decides to give up the child for adoption, no less. Normally, you would not catch me anywhere near a movie like this, but there is nothing normal about Juno. It deftly avoids the cloying clichés of its genre and presents a carefully drawn, highly believable cast of characters instead of the caricatures that would populate one of its lesser cousins. Ellen Page is flawless as the titular mother-to-be, projecting just the right combination of intelligence and naiveté; she reacts to her problem as a level-headed near-adult and never transforms into the squealing parody that most movies would tells us a pregnant teen must, but also realizes her limits and recognizes that some things are beyond her. Jennifer Garner takes on a role far outside her comfort zone as the wife in the adoptive couple, and when the dynamic between her, her husband (Bateman) and Juno takes a turn in the third act, she acquits herself with grace. The first-time script from Diablo Cody is outstanding, and if this and Thank You For Smoking are any indication, Reitman has a career ahead of him that will leave his father's in the dust. (Ivan Reitman directed and produced some films you may have heard of, such as Ghostbusters.)
4. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (directed by Tim Burton, written by John Logan from the musical by Stephen Sondheim, starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jayne Wisener and Edward Sanders) - In the hands of most directors, a film adaptation of a three-hour stage musical about a homicidal barber in Victorian London and his cannibalistic, meat-pie making partner in crime would have been a disaster. Luckily, Tim Burton is not most directors. The darkest of his Gothic sensibilities were given free reign here, and the result is an unmitigated triumph. Trimming everything but the most central storyarc from the source material, the movie focuses squarely on Sweeney Todd (Depp), the barber whose 15-year exile from England has left him bitter and bent on revenge. Ably assisted by his former landlady, Mrs. Lovett (Carter), Todd sets out to murder the corrupt judge (Rickman) who deported him as a prelude to violating his wife and taking in his daughter, Johanna (Wisener). As time passes and plans falter, Todd becomes more and more bent on extending his revenge to the whole world, leading to his inevitable downfall. Told almost entirely through song, Sweeney Todd is a striking and unique vision of one man's madness, with Burton creating an incredible visual landscape and Depp delivering a hypnotic, unforgettable performance.
3. Eastern Promises (directed by David Cronenberg, written by Steve Knight, starring Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel and Armin Mueller-Stahl) - My favorite film of 2005 was A History Of Violence, and this re-teaming of Cronenberg and Mortensen is a worthy follow-up. Anna Khitrova (Watts) is a London midwife who delivers a baby from a teenage girl who dies in childbirth. The girl's diary is written in Russian; in an effort to track down the girl's family, Anna follows a business card she finds in the diary to a restaurant owned by Semyon (Mueller-Stahl), who offers to translate the writings. Anna quickly realizes she is in over her head as Semyon's ties to the Russian mob become clear. Gradually, the focus of the film shifts to Nikolai (Mortensen), Semyon's driver, who appears to be torn between his loyalties to Semyon and his son (Cassel) and a burgeoning attraction to Anna. Things are not exactly what they seem, and while I won't spoil the plot for you, how things happen is not quite as important as why, or why not, as the case may be. Cronenberg drags away the veneer of civility to expose the rot lurking just beneath the surface of our everyday lives, embodying our unspoken fears of existing in a society that none of us can fully understand, even while a part of it. Mortensen disappears into the role of Nikolai, and his cold, hard stare will follow you all the way out of the theater. Eastern Promises also boasts one of the most visceral, effective fight scenes ever put to film. It's not for the squeamish, but then again, that's sort of the point.
2. There Will Be Blood (written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson from the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Ciaran Hinds, Dillon Freasier and Kevin J. O'Connor) - While I did not actually see this film during 2007, I will count it as a 2007 release for the purposes of this list. Anderson is one of those directors that knocks it out of the park almost every single time, making a name for himself with Boogie Nights and cementing it with Magnolia. While I did not much care for Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood is his best work yet. Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) is a self-described "oil man" in California at the turn of the century, creating an empire for himself via charisma and the sweat of his brow. That empire, however, has a singular purpose: to divorce Plainview from any sort of meaningful human contact. A borderline sociopath, his loathing for the rest of humanity knows almost no limits, and his own emotional responses seem to disgust him. His conflict with Eli Sunday (Dano), a young preacher who leads a community sitting on top of a rich oil deposit, begins a slow burn within Daniel, a conflagration that rages within him for months and years, drawing in everyone around him, including his son H.W. (Freasier), and builds towards an ending that is bizarre, and shocking, but is also the only conclusion that makes any sense. I leave the details of the plot vague because it's better that way. Anderson restrains himself here, giving Daniel and his actions a slow, concentrated attention befitting the epic scope of the picture. The opening sequence, virtually without dialogue for almost fifteen minutes, is just gorgeous, and the visual poetry of the American West on display throughout serves as an appropriate backdrop for this very American story of ambition, greed and madness. I would be remiss if I did not mention Jonny Greenwood's score; the Radiohead guitarist's composition is decidedly non-traditional, but utterly appropriate, and carries the silent sections with aplomb while heightening the film's impact as a whole. Paul Dano (the silent brother in Little Miss Sunshine) gets an amazing role for a young actor and blows it out of the water, but the story here is all about Day-Lewis. Famous for his eccentricities and intense commitment to roles, he explodes into the character of Daniel Plainview with demonic abandon, baring some truly dark parts of himself, going to the kind of mental/emotional places you don't talk about in polite company. It's hard for something in a movie to frighten me, but Day-Lewis was truly terrifying, and utterly magnificent.
1. No Country For Old Men (written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen from the novel by Cormac McCarthy, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Kelly Macdonald and Woody Harrelson) - The Coen brothers are two of my very, very favorite directors, and I feel comfortable saying that No Country For Old Men is the best film they've ever made, which is quite a feat. It's better than Blood Simple. It's better than my beloved Big Lebowski. It's even better than Fargo, pretty much universally agreed to be one of the top ten American films of the 1990s. Based on what I'm told is an equally searing novel by Cormac McCarthy, the basic premise of No Country is deceptively standard. Llewelyn Moss (Brolin) is a welder and Vietnam vet in 1980 West Texas who discovers the scene of a drug deal gone wrong in the middle of the desert and absconds with the buy money, some two million dollars. He is pursued by Anton Chigurh (Bardem), a hitman hired to retrieve the cash. Both men are in turn being tracked by Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Jones), a local lawman who suspects he may be out of his depth. Thus begins a cat-and-mouse game that ranges across various nondescript motels and lonely roads, as the three men circle around one another and occasionally collide. The back-and-forth between Moss and Chigurh is perfectly measured by the Coens, with rising tension and brief resolution alternating until the audience is left breathless. Fate and circumstance, favorite themes of the Coens, are explored thoroughly here, as are the ideas of changing times and the nature of violence within our society. The ending may throw you a little, but if you reframe the film with Sheriff Bell as the main character, things will become more clear. The Coens' direction is taut and moody, marrying their neo-noir sensitivities to the desert landscapes with skill and vision. Javier Bardem turns in a performance as an intractable embodiment of evil just as horrifying in its insanity as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood. While I've somewhat exhausted my capacity for hyperbole, everything I said about Daniel Day-Lewis above applies to Bardem as well. Brolin and Jones are also astonishing, and I challenge you not to get chills during Jones' final speech.
Honorable Mentions go, in alphabetical order, to: 28 Weeks Later, 30 Days Of Night, 3:10 To Yuma, Beowulf, The Golden Compass, Hot Fuzz, I Am Legend, Knocked Up, The Mist, Stardust, Sunshine, and Superbad. I must also mention Transformers, which while utterly bereft of dramatic credibility, was a triumph in the field of giant-robot-ass-kickery.
I would like to extend a Special Mention to Blade Runner: The Final Cut, which I had the pleasure of seeing in the gorgeous Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline. Ridley Scott redefined cinematic science fiction with this film's original release in 1982, and this new definitive version only improves on his stunning vision of the future. This film, alongside Jaws and one or two others, is largely responsible for my ideas of and appreciation for film aesthetics and visual structure. I've seen it I don't know how many times, and never get tired of it. The new cut is already out on DVD, so put it in the Netflix queue and see what all the fuss is about.
As much as I'd rather not, I also must make Dishonorable Mentions of two films that were huge disappointments for me. Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 had about one-and-a-half plots too many, trying to cram in everything before the three-picture deal with Raimi, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst expired. Despite some great action sequences, the movie is a mess structurally and makes a weak conclusion to a series whose first two installments were so strong. Richard Kelly's Southland Tales, meanwhile, is one of the worst sophomore slumps of all time. Say what you will about Donnie Darko, but I'm a big fan. To see Kelly's follow-up descend into such raging, pretentious incoherence was just sad. Let's hope that The Box, coming sometime next year, will be the second film we all wanted to see from him.
So, that was 2007 in film according to Pat. 2008 is shaping up to be quite eventful on the summer-blockbuster and comics-adaptations front. The big news, of course, is Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins sequel, The Dark Knight, and the return of Professor Henry Jones, Jr. in Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army and The X-Files 2 are also of particular interest to me. Other 2008 releases that may be worth checking out include: Cloverfield, Be Kind Rewind, Jumper, Synecdoche New York, Righteous Kill, Choke, The Lovely Bones, The Happening, Wall-E, Valkyrie, Pineapple Express, James Bond 22, The Changeling, Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Star Trek, The Box, Bruno: Delicious Journeys Through America For The Purpose Of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable In The Presence Of A Gay Foreigner In A Mesh T-Shirt, Burn After Reading and The Fighter.